Page 62 of Love Undecided
Chapter 26
Brad
Ethan and I finish a medical call and join the rest of the station at a small kitchen fire.
Luckily there is not a lot of damage and no one was injured. Grease fire gone bad. The man of the house had attempted to extinguish the fire with baking soda and a towel, but by then the wall behind the stove and the ceiling had caught fire. His wife called 911 immediately and our guys arrived within minutes of the fire starting. It’s so much about timing when fighting a fire. And much of that has to do with the amount of time it takes to get to a site.
We get back to the station and finish reloading the truck and changing out the equipment just in time to hear the speakers roar to life again.
Engine 82, Truck 37, Rescue 13. Amber Alert - Child Abduction - 7032 Hudson Street. Residential.
The same street that Mavis Strassburg lives on.
We pull onto the street in a matter of minutes, lights on, no sirens, luckily there is no traffic at three-thirty a.m. which makes for a quick trip. Even though there isn't always much we can do in the case of an Amber Alert, we are still required to answer the call. We show up at everything.
We arrive at the same time as the first responding police, so the captain goes inside with the officers to see if we are needed. The guys and I get out of the rig and roam around a bit. I see a light on at the end of the street where Mavis lives, and make a note to go back and check on her soon.
Another car pulls up a short while later with a male driving and a female passenger. I immediately recognize Kat as the passenger and lean back against the truck, slightly out of view, to watch her.
She pulls her baseball cap low on on her brow before she gets out of the car. She looks around and ducks down near the side of the car.
Ethan comes up beside me. "Isn't that Kat?" he asks.
We watch as she runs stooped over from the car to the side of a shrub and from there straight into the house. A few moments later she comes back out, dragging the driver of the car behind her. I recognize him as the guy that was at her house earlier tonight.
“She’s with that fucking guy again, isn’t she?” I ask Ethan.
“Bauer? Yep, but I’m sure he just picked her up. And not that she was, like,withhim.”
“I don’t like him. At all.”
“Hey, you ever notice he kind of looks like Bradley Cooper?”
“What? No way. That guy looks nothing like Bradley Cooper. He looks like a douchebag.”
“Sure you’re not jealous, bro?”
“Pfft. Of him... no... fuck, probably. I mean, God, look at that guy,” I admit.
“He’s got nothing over you, man.”
“Thanks, bro, didn’t know you cared,” I tease.
“Hey, you jump, I jump, right?” he says with a smile and a wink.
“You promised never to tease me about that movie again! I told you that in confidence. And in my defense, it’s a really good movie, the special effects with the ship sinking are amazing and Kate Winslet is hot.”
It’s hard enough to retain some sense of masculinity around the station with the guys knowing that I’m an animal lover who likes to cook and garden. If they knew one of my all-time favorite movies wasTitanicI’d lose my man card forever.
“Sorry bro, my bad,” he says, chuckling. “Be right back.”
